The Trump Presidency

[Allan F]

President Trump is refusing to pay Rudy Giuliani's legal fees.

Didn't I predict that a few weeks ago? Or was it somewhere else?

[gillianren]

We apparently had about a hundred people at ours, mostly protesting mask restrictions.

As to not paying his bills, well, it's hardly news.

[Peter B]

We apparently had about a hundred people at ours, mostly protesting mask restrictions.

As to not paying his bills, well, it's hardly news.

And that's been the story of his Presidency, hasn't it? The way he's behaved, his operational method, was there for all to see for years before he was President.

That, for example, was how he was able to control the Republican Party. He offered everything that the Party leadership wanted, for example, nominating the judges they wanted. And in return he demanded absolute loyalty with the threat (that he always followed through on) of ridicule and withdrawal of his - and the voters' - support. He knew their weak point (that they need to get through primaries and then be elected) and he had control of the power over that weak point (a large portion of Republican voters supported him rather than the party).

I'm fairly sure that operational method - (a) find your mark's weak point and take control of it, (b) offer the mark everything they want, and (c) demand the mark's absolute loyalty and always apply pressure to that weak point whenever the loyalty is less than absolute - is how he ran his businesses over the years.

It's a method that worked well with the Republican Party, perhaps not so well with people like Putin, Xi and Kim...

[BazBear]

Here in Vermont, Montpelier has been quiet, no pro-Trump demonstrations. On Sunday there were about 50 counter-protestors who had a peaceful rally at City Hall, holding signs and serving pancakes and coffee.

[apollo16uvc]

Something might be happening... 

Confirmed now that the Marines are deployed to DC and have full combat gear. 

The National Guardsmen in the city were disarmed due to Democrat paranoia, and they tried to vet all 25,000 of them to weed out anybody that voted Republican at all in the last election.

[apollo16uvc]

All signs point to a major military buildup for something big tomorrow, but I don't know what.

Also keep in mind that the USMC's Commandant, who is usually pretty active on social media, has gone completely dark in the last couple of weeks.  I also have inside sources that tell me that there are indeed Marines in DC right now, just not what they're doing. Understandable, since they have to maintain OPSEC.

Trump still technically controls the armed forces until 12 PM EST on the 20th. So if they're going to make a move, they have about a day to do it.

It's also possible that they're acting on their own initiative.

[LunarOrbit]

Confirmed now that the Marines are deployed to DC and have full combat gear. 

The National Guardsmen in the city were disarmed due to Democrat paranoia

Source?

[gillianren]

The Democratic party was trying to weed out white supremacists, yes.  If you correlate that with "people who voted for Trump," well.

[JayUtah]

Yes, I too would like to learn more.

A couple things to keep in mind:  National Guard are not routinely armed when in and among the populace.  And when armed, they are armed only to protect themselves.  That is, they cannot act as law enforcement or general troops.  Their rules of engagement are purely defensive.  So the National Guard being "disarmed" would be the rule, not the exception.  It would depend here upon the exact circumstances, orders, and rules of engagement.

As far as the National Guard presence in DC, it's easy to conflate the two purposes immediately at hand.  On the one hand there is an extraordinary presence of Guards in the Capitol, at other places, and immediately outside the District.  This is in natural response to the Capitol attack.  But for the typical inauguration, each state sends a a company or so of its National Guard to attend the inauguration and provide ordinary levels of security such as for crowd control, traffic direction, etc.  This is mostly ceremonial and it's very uncommon for those honor guards to be readily armed.  But of course this inauguration is special, so there may be special guidelines or orders.  Yes, there was special screening.  My inside source is my brother-in-law, who is a lieutenant in the Utah National Guard.  No, they're not asking who you voted for.  They're repeating the part of the ordinary initial screening for Guard troops to weed out extremists.  (If you excluded all Republican-voting members of our National Guard, you'd have maybe one platoon left.)

Now as for Marines in DC, there are always Marines in DC.  There has been a company of Marines stationed there since the Jefferson Administration.  And part of their mission has always been to guard parts of the capitol city as needed.  The White House, for example, is always guarded by Marines, usually in highly ceremonial costume, but not just as a show.  So if they are deployed now, it would be entirely normal.  If there are additional Marines in DC beyond the normal complement, that's something else.  And if they are armed, that too would be something else.  Again, there is a deep tradition in the U.S. against deploying active-duty military as a domestic police force.  "Full combat gear" may include weapons but, for example, not ammunition.  And combat readiness may be indicated simply because it includes helmets and body armor -- clearly indicated following the Jan. 6 incident.

[Jason Thompson]

Accepting it may sound naive but from my position as an outsider with very limited knowledge of US processes, it doesn’t seem at all surprising that there should be a military presence from across the US at the inauguration of a new Commander-in-Chief of the US military, regardless of any other circumstances that may surround this particular inauguration.

[LunarOrbit]

Accepting it may sound naive but from my position as an outsider with very limited knowledge of US processes, it doesn’t seem at all surprising that there should be a military presence from across the US at the inauguration of a new Commander-in-Chief of the US military, regardless of any other circumstances that may surround this particular inauguration.

I think what apollo16uvc is implying is that the Marines are there for some kind of nefarious reason. I want his source for that, otherwise it just sounds like the same kind of conspiracy theory nonsense that is destroying the United States.

People ask me "what is the harm of just letting people believe in their conspiracy theories?". This. This is the harm of letting people believe conspiracy theories. It starts with flat Earthers and moon hoax believers, and then it evolves into large numbers of people believing that wearing a mask to prevent the spread of a virus is oppression, and that the results of an election are fraudulent. And before you know it, half the country thinks Hillary Clinton runs a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant.

[jfb]

Accepting it may sound naive but from my position as an outsider with very limited knowledge of US processes, it doesn’t seem at all surprising that there should be a military presence from across the US at the inauguration of a new Commander-in-Chief of the US military, regardless of any other circumstances that may surround this particular inauguration.

I think what apollo16uvc is implying is that the Marines are there for some kind of nefarious reason. I want his source for that, otherwise it just sounds like the same kind of conspiracy theory nonsense that is destroying the United States.

People ask me "what is the harm of just letting people believe in their conspiracy theories?". This. This is the harm of letting people believe conspiracy theories. It starts with flat Earthers and moon hoax believers, and then it evolves into large numbers of people believing that wearing a mask to prevent the spread of a virus is oppression, and that the results of an election are fraudulent. And before you know it, half the country thinks Hillary Clinton runs a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant.

And from there it's only a couple of short steps to an armed insurrection, aimed specifically at preventing a transfer of power from one Presidential administration to the next.  That's not a slippery slope argument, given that it literally just happened. 

Half of the country is living in a horrific fantasy world crafted from the bat-shittiest ingredients that's constantly reinforced by a right-wing media complex, and they've decided they shouldn't have to abide by the results of an election anymore. 

Our country is broken.  I don't know how to fix it (without running afoul of the first amendment, anyway).  I don't think it can be fixed. 

[JayUtah]

Accepting it may sound naive but from my position as an outsider with very limited knowledge of US processes, it doesn’t seem at all surprising that there should be a military presence from across the US at the inauguration of a new Commander-in-Chief of the US military, regardless of any other circumstances that may surround this particular inauguration.

The military presence customarily recognized for a new Commander-in-Chief is that of the top officers.  It is not common to present a show of force.  The ceremonial delegations from the States' National Guards have had a practical role in the past, the aforementioned crowd and traffic control.  It's not as if they join ranks and march in a big military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.  Inaugural parades and displays have historically been almost completely civilian affairs.  This is why Trump's desire for a military-style send-off has pursed so many lips.

And the President is not normally the Commander-in-Chief of the States' National Guards.  They are ordinarily under the sole command of the governors of each state.  So there is no regular duty for any National Guard to show homage to the President of the United States.  For the President to gain control over state troops, a series of steps has to ensue to "federalize" them, such as the declaration of a national state of emergency.

[JayUtah]

I think what apollo16uvc is implying is that the Marines are there for some kind of nefarious reason. I want his source for that, otherwise it just sounds like the same kind of conspiracy theory nonsense that is destroying the United States.

Right:  without more information, there can be explanations for the alluded-to observations that have their roots in ordinary, or at least acceptable. practice.  It would take more information to separate the correct reading of genuinely disturbing occurrences from an uninformed reading of relatively unremarkable ones.

People ask me "what is the harm of just letting people believe in their conspiracy theories?". This. This is the harm of letting people believe conspiracy theories.

Indeed, the problem seems to have been that people didn't realize just how slippery the slope is.  Once you agree that facts don't matter on minor issues, you can easily extend that to disregarding facts when they literally spell out life and death.  How to fix America?  There have to be consequences for ignoring facts.  Until that happens, nothing else will have an effect.

[LunarOrbit]

I think a large percentage of the adult population is a lost cause. You'll never undo the damage done to their ability to separate fact from fiction. But maybe with improvements to the education system and stricter laws against knowingly spreading misinformation there is hope for future generations.